


Jolly Christmas

by OpalCowan



Category: Die Hard
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpalCowan/pseuds/OpalCowan
Summary: Five Christmas John and Holly had to rebuild their marriage, and one where it perfect.
Relationships: Holly Gennaro/John McClane
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Jolly Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/gifts).



> To my Yuletide Recipient!  
> I have to thank you for asking for a Die Hard story, it's been too long since I watched them!  
> I hope this fulfils your request!   
> Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

1988

John can see the sun poking through the clouds. It’s six am on Christmas Day and he can imagine the kids up, waiting for Mum and Dad. But, they’re still at Nakatomi Plaza; still processing the Christmas Eve that was. Yesterday, John flew in to see his kids and try to get Holly back. Now, Holly won’t leave his side, even while the kids are still with the housekeeper back home. There is so much that needs to be said before that can happen, but John is willing to say it.

They make it back home as the morning news finishes their reports, a police car swinging into the drive way and the office helping Holly get John out of the back seat. The kids are waiting by the door. Holly hushes them and takes John into the living room, to rest on the couch. The house is decorated, and Santa’s cookies still sit next to the tree, waiting for him to arrive.

John doses in and out while Holly gathers the kids and celebrates Christmas.

“How come Santa didn’t come here?” Lucy asks.

“He’ll be here tonight,” Holly promises, “he has to wait for Mum and Dad to be home.”

The kids accept her answer and climb onto John after Christmas lunch. Holly captures the moment and wraps herself around her family as well. Tomorrow husband and wife will talk about their marriage, they’ll apologise for their wrongs, and make new promises for the future.

1992

Christmas in Washington was colder than Los Angeles. Even with the burning wreckage of a plane and the warm arms of a loved one as a blanket. Holly asks why it keeps happening to them, and John doesn’t have an answer; “just bad luck”, he says.

The kids are asleep with their grandparents, so John takes her to a little motel down the road. What was meant to be a romantic night turned into an intimate one. Holly and John spent their time acting out their love for each other. 

The sun hasn’t risen when they arrive home. The kids are still in bed, Holly parents are waiting for them at the door. Hugs are given, even from the men in the room. Holly and John fall asleep on either side of the children. Hoping that today will be the day for the children to finally sleep in; but smile all the same, when they’re woken early to screams of ‘Santa’ and ‘Merry Christmas’. 

They watch as their children open presents, letting their joy and excitement fuel them for the long day. The Gennaro-McClane family become stronger every Christmas, and John won’t let a crazed terrorist take his family away from him, why would he let a job do it?

1995

John stood on the edges of Rockefeller Centre; the ice-skating rink had officially opened early this morning and John would always remember Holly’s smile from their third date as she circled the rink. John stood off and nursed his coffee. They needed this. Holly’s miscarriage had seen John spend too much time at work, and what time was left, at the bottom of a bottle. 

He thumbs the chip in his pocket; ‘One Year Sober’ it says. John was so focused on the job and the bottle that year that he hadn’t seen the pain his family went through, until bags at the door and kids in the car made him see it. Lucy was thirteen now, Jack was ten. He needed to be there, needed to be the proud father he never had. He promised Holly, and himself, that he wouldn’t look to a bottle for his grief. 

Holly’s father suggested they talk about it, and they did. They got stronger again. 

Holly spins and laughs towards John, before her face turns to confusion. She skates over and rests her arms on the rail while John is approached by an NYPD detective.

“John McClane?” 

John nods and listens while Holly changes into her boots. John keeps nodding until he and Holly are in a police van, in Harlem. 

“John, no,” Holly says. John is pulling a sign over his head. ‘I HATE NIGGERS’ it reads. “They’ll kill you.” 

“Me, or innocent kids. If it were Jack or Lucy, I’d want someone to do it for them.” He kisses Holly and steps out of the van. “The NYPD will make sure I don’t die. They live by their Shield.” He adjusts his sign and pats the 45 strapped to his back. “Tonight, I’m taking you to dinner; reservations and all. I’m not gonna miss that.”

John still remembers every asshole he’s dealt with in his career; with a family he cares about he needs to remember who would want to hurt him. It’s not until a few hours later, Holly on one side Zeus on the other, while a bunch of suits tell him about Hans Gruber and his brother that John tells Holly to take an early flight home. The screaming match that follows has them both angry and hurt, but Holly gets on the plane, while John chases down a crazed terrorist.

They save the day, in Canada. All John can this about is calling Holly again, but he changes his mind. Zeus and himself board the next planes out of Nova Scotia; Zeus back to Harlem, where hopefully his shop isn’t completely destroyed; while John is headed back to Los Angeles. He’s bruised and beaten, like the last time, but that’s one less crazed terrorist his kids will grow up with.

He arrives home the early hours of Christmas Eve. The house is quiet, except for Jack’s snores. He feels like he’s home. He takes a quick shower and places his chip on Holly’s side of the bed. She stirs when he wraps his arms around her, but falls back to sleep quickly when John whispers, “nothing will ever take me from you or our kids, I love you more today than yesterday.”

2007

Lucy was six months from graduating at Rutgers. She hadn’t spoken to her dad in three months after she found out that he had put a tracker on her phone. Now she was stuck in the elevator at College during a blackout and she wished her dad was here. She’d laugh at her situation, but it was getting hot and she’d been stuck her for three hours already. Her stomach growled and all she wanted was for the police to get here already. 

The elevator doors started to open, and she breathed a sigh of relief. The FBI agent helped her climb out of the elevator and she looked around. If she had known what would happen next, she would have stayed in the elevator. 

Hours later, as she sat next to her dad in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital, she apologised. So did John. Their truce was ended when the ambulance doors opened and Holly stood there, waiting for her family. Lucy and Holly stayed with John while he was bandaged up and given something for the pain. Holly spoke of how her day was affected by the Fire Sale, how Nakatomi Industries had sent everyone home just after lunch because there was nothing to be done with their main systems down. John laughed and wondered what he would have been doing if he wasn’t dragging the Farrell kid around to make sure he didn’t die. 

Speaking of… 

“Mr Farrell wanted me to ask how you were feeling, and if you knew somewhere he could stay while he recuperates?” A nurse asks after she takes his vitals for what John thought was the hundredth time.

Lucy and Holly share a look while John groans. He looks between his daughter and the love of his life and thinks ‘at least Jack is away at school’.

“I guess we’re taking the stray home for Christmas,” he says. He knows from how the women in the room are looking at him that he said, almost, the right thing.

2013

John had finally dragged John McClane Junior back from Russia, or the Ukraine, or wherever the hell they had ended up at the end of a crazy, unsanctioned, CIA mission. Jack had a lot to explain when he got home, and John hoped that Holly and Lucy would not hold him accountable for all the shit that Jack had gotten into. Lucy greeted them at the small airport in the middle of nowhere, where their charter plane had landed. She looked good, in comparison to the male McClanes it wasn’t saying much. 

Her arms crossed over each other as she waited for them to get settled into her small ford. Even after embracing them both, and knowing they were real, she was still scared to look in her mirror and see no one sitting there. She didn’t ask for details, she didn’t speak to them at all during the ride, she calmly drove to the house her parents had moved into when McClane Senior had started to talk about retirement.

Holly and Matt stood at the door. The house had a reef on the front door, but no other decorations, since John was picky about how they were put up. What McClane Senior had thought would be a week had turned into two, and Christmas was now three days away.

“Hey Holly,” John greeted as he squeezed her tight and whispered, “I love you.”

Jack hugged her after and received a swat to the back of his head when they all walked inside. 

The McClane’s are violent people. Not just in their fierceness to defend each other, but also in the way they love each other. Lucy and Jack will never know the explosions of love that occurred each night they were conceived, same that John and Holly never need to know the passion between Matt and Lucy. 

Their voices were lost in the New York traffic, though. And when Christmas dawned, only days later, they all woke and celebrated a love that had survived alcohol, arguments, secret government organisations, heartbreak, and, crazed terrorists. And they were whole.

2020

John McClane Senior celebrated his sixty-fifth Christmas surrounded by his family. And celebrate they did. McClane Senior finally retired; in his retirement speech he spoke of the NYPD and LAPD that had become brothers to him over his years of service, he spoke of crazed terrorists that had tried (unsuccessfully, obviously) to kill him and his family, and last he spoke of his family. The main reason why, as a man still able to run like he was thirty years younger, was retiring; and to be a teacher at the Police Academy too.

This Christmas he wasn’t woken by the screams of Jack and Lucy, but by John McClane the Third. The little three-year-old that was excited for his first Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. He squealed as John tickled him and blew raspberries at Holly from his arms. 

This was Christmas for the McClanes. Sitting in front of the Christmas tree, watching John try to rip open his Christmas presents, while his mum recorded him for future days to come. He snuggled up to Holly, smiling at her slowly greying hair. One moment could have cost him everything, but not even Crazed Terrorists would take his family from him. So, John will never make any mistake more stupid than that.


End file.
